酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Heroes and Hero Worship-Part28_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
types of the two men are not dissimilar. Burns too could have governed,



debated in National Assemblies; politicized, as few could. Alas, the

courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of smuggling schooners in



the Solway Frith; in keeping _silence_ over so much, where no good speech,

but only inarticulate rage was possible: this might have bellowed forth



Ushers de Breze and the like; and made itself visible to all men, in

managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable epochs! But they



said to him reprovingly, his Official Superiors said, and wrote: "You are

to work, not think." Of your _thinking-faculty_, the greatest in this



land, we have no need; you are to gauge beer there; for that only are you

wanted. Very notable;--and worth mentioning, though we know what is to be



said and answered! As if Thought, Power of Thinking, were not, at all

times, in all places and situations of the world, precisely the thing that



was wanted. The fatal man, is he not always the unthinking man, the man

who cannot think and _see_; but only grope, and hallucinate, and _mis_see



the nature of the thing he works with? He mis-sees it, mis_takes_ it as we

say; takes it for one thing, and it _is_ another thing,--and leaves him



standing like a Futility there! He is the fatal man; unutterably fatal,

put in the high places of men.--"Why complain of this?" say some:



"Strength is mournfully denied its arena; that was true from of old."

Doubtless; and the worse for the _arena_, answer I! _Complaining_ profits



little; stating of the truth may profit. That a Europe, with its French

Revolution just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except for gauging



beer,--is a thing I, for one, cannot _rejoice_ at!--

Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of Burns is the



_sincerity_ of him. So in his Poetry, so in his Life. The song he sings

is not of fantasticalities; it is of a thing felt, really there; the prime



merit of this, as of all in him, and of his Life generally, is truth. The

Life of Burns is what we may call a great tragicsincerity. A sort of



savagesincerity,--not cruel, far from that; but wild, wrestling naked with

the truth of things. In that sense, there is something of the savage in



all great men.

Hero-worship,--Odin, Burns? Well; these Men of Letters too were not



without a kind of Hero-worship: but what a strange condition has that got

into now! The waiters and ostlers of Scotch inns, prying about the door,



eager to catch any word that fell from Burns, were doing unconscious

reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for worshipper. Rousseau



had worshippers enough; princes calling on him in his mean garret; the

great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor moon-struck man. For



himself a most portentous contradiction; the two ends of his life not to be

brought into harmony. He sits at the tables of grandees; and has to copy



music for his own living. He cannot even get his music copied: "By dint

of dining out," says he, "I run the risk of dying by starvation at home."



For his worshippers too a most questionable thing! If doing Hero-worship

well or badly be the test of vital well-being or ill-being to a generation,



can we say that _these_ generations are very first-rate?--And yet our

heroic Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you



like to call them; intrinsically there is no preventing it by any means

whatever. The world has to obey him who thinks and sees in the world. The



world can alter the manner of that; can either have it as blessed

continuous summer sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder and



tornado,--with unspeakable difference of profit for the world! The manner

of it is very alterable; the matter and fact of it is not alterable by any



power under the sky. Light; or, failing that, lightning: the world can

take its choice. Not whether we call an Odin god, prophet, priest, or what



we call him; but whether we believe the word he tells us: there it all

lies. If it be a true word, we shall have to believe it; believing it, we



shall have to do it. What _name_ or welcome we give him or it, is a point




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号